Church committed to righting the wrongs of the past: Cardinal George Pell

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9NEWS

Cardinal George Pell has concluded giving evidence to the child sexual abuse royal commission with a declaration of the church’s intention to “make things better”.

It comes following 19 hours of testimony over four nights, during which the high-ranking Vatican official defended, deflected and dodged his way through gruelling questioning.

“It’s been a bit of a hard slog, at least for me,” he said.

Today’s testimony included the admission that Cardinal Pell did nothing after a boy complained to him about a pedophile Christian Brother abusing children at a Victorian school, with the cardinal denying he could have stopped more abuse occurring.

The child abuse royal commission has heard a student at St Patricks College in Ballarat told Cardinal Pell that Brother Edward Dowlan was "misbehaving" with boys in 1974.

Cardinal Pell said the boy "mentioned it casually in conversation" and did not ask him to do anything.

When asked by Commissioner Peter McClellan what he did with the information, Cardinal Pell replied: "I didn't do anything about it".

Eventually, he said, he inquired about the matter with the school chaplain but did not go immediately to the school to find out what was going on.

"With the experience of 40 years later, certainly I would agree that I should have done more," Cardinal Pell said.

He also again denied asking a nephew and victim of pedophile priest Gerald Francis Ridsdale what it would take to keep him quiet.

David Ridsdale has told the child abuse royal commission when he told Cardinal Pell in 1993 he had been abused by his uncle, the then Melbourne bishop asked him: "I want to know what it will take to keep you quiet."

Cardinal Pell told the commission yesterday the church in the 1970s and 1980s was a world of crimes and cover ups and he was left in the dark about serious sex abuse allegations against priests and brothers in Ballarat and Melbourne.

He also said he regretted his choice of words when he told the commission on Tuesday he had no interest in Father Ridsdale's offending in the mid-1970s.

Cardinal Pell said he completely messed up the sequence of events while giving evidence and had believed he was responding to questions about when he was a Melbourne official in 1993.

"I regret the choice of words. I was very confused. I responded poorly," he said today.

"I have never enjoyed reading the accounts of these sufferings and I tried to do that only when it was professionally and absolutely appropriate because the behaviour is abhorrent and painful to read about."

Cardinal Pell - who was then a Ballarat priest - had said he didn't know Ridsdale's offending was common knowledge in the Inglewood parish in 1975 and did not know about the allegations.

"It's a sad story and it wasn't of much interest to me," he said on Tuesday to gasps of surprise from some of those watching the commission hearing.

"The suffering, of course, was real and I very much regret that, but I had no reason to turn my mind to the extent of the evils that Ridsdale had perpetrated."

Mr Ridsdale's lawyer Stephen Odgers SC asked: "Was it the case that you didn't have much interest in what David Ridsdale told you about the crimes of Gerald Ridsdale?"

Cardinal Pell replied: "That's completely untrue and David has never claimed that."

Asked if his primary interest was to protect the church, Cardinal Pell said "not in the slightest".

Cardinal Pell said there was a radical misunderstanding between himself and Mr Ridsdale over their 1993 telephone conversation.

"I'm not even sure what keeping quiet means," he said.

"I do dispute that.

"But for a man who was expressing a preference for a church hearing rather than going to the police, I wouldn't have had any dispute with him on that score, although I have never impeded or discouraged anyone from going to the police."

Child abuse victims left disappointed by Cardinal Pell’s testimony can expect to hear the Commissioner in several months’ time.